Bird habitat despoiled by tree-felling, say locals

The Tanaiste may not have known it at the time, but her visit to Oranmore, Co Galway last week coincided with a sad event. Ms Harney's happy news about 600 more jobs for Galway city and her tributes to its quality of life came just hours after what locals describe as a "savage" attack on the environment where some of these prospective new employees might choose to live.

Even as her black Mercedes cruised past Oranmore Castle en route to the press reception and lunch hosted by Manufacturers' Services Ltd and IDA Ireland, distressed herons were desperately searching for their young in the driving rain. Ms Harney, a former junior environment minister, would hardly have noticed the felling of up to 50 deciduous trees in a nearby woodland area; indeed, it had come to the attention of Oranmore residents only a couple of hours earlier.

Seven miles east of Galway city, on the south-east shore of Galway Bay, Oranmore was once a small village, but is now experiencing the best and worst of the city's relentless expansion.

One patch of land ripe for development has been the area around "Corcoran's" or the "bluebell wood". Planted between 1860 and 1890, the woodland comprises three plots, where European larch, ash, beech, sycamore, blackthorn, whitethorn, elder and Scots pine grow. The wood provides a thriving habitat occupied by herons and rooks above, and by badgers, liverworts, mosses, lichens, bracken, bramble, woodrush and bluebell below.

The naturalist, Dr Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington, has noted that the habitat has at least a dozen herbs, including pignut and germander speedwell, and said that, far from declining, it was "actively generating into a type of woodland more similar to that which would have existed in the area for thousands of years".

When the private land came up for sale in 1996, Ms Leonie King, owner of Oranmore Castle, wrote to Galway County Council and contacted the then minister of state - now Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources - Mr Fahey. Ms King was concerned about the impact of any development on the heronry, and appealed for a preservation order. Her appeal appeared to be unsuccessful, though Mr Fahey did reply that he had been assured the heronry would be protected in any planning permission. Permission was then sought by a Gort builder, O'Grady Construction Ltd, to build 196 houses, and a tree-felling licence was granted by the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources - before a planning decision was made.

O'Grady Construction was required to carry out an environmental impact assessment, as the land included a prospective Special Area of Conservation under the EU Habitats Directive. The company commissioned a report, which advised that the wood was shallow and insecure, with a significant number of trees being dead and many others not "wind-firm".

In response, Oranmore residents commissioned their own assessment from an English company, which concluded that the wood was of particular historical and scientific interest. Galway County Council said it was advised that the woodland was too dangerous for a preservation order. The construction company confirmed to this newspaper last year that the official who handled the advice - and subsequently left the local authority - was hired by it as a consultant engineer.

The company also said it had put in some 3,250 new coniferous rather than deciduous trees on land near Gort, in accordance with stipulations in the felling licence.

When Galway County Council granted permission for the housing, it included a provision that a large section of the wood be protected, effectively reducing the number of houses to 144. O'Grady Construction Ltd appealed, as did Oranmore Community Development Association and An Taisce, for different reasons. The oral hearing by An Bord Pleanala is set for March 14th.

Under a "gentleman's agreement", it was understood that the tree-felling licence would not be exercised until the ruling on the planning appeal. But last Thursday morning, during terrible weather conditions, Ms King discovered that almost a quarter of the wood - the two smaller plots and one-third of the larger section - had been felled. Mr O'Grady, of O'Grady Construction, was unavailable for comment.

The Oranmore Community Development Association has been seeking legal advice. Ms King believes that the action is in breach of the 1976 Wildlife Act, which states that it is illegal to destroy the habitat of breeding birds.

Ironically, yesterday marked the start of National Tree Week.